Rosie Amber’s Friday Five Challenge ~ The Vagrant by Peter Newman

Rosie’s Friday Five Challenge, involves taking only five minutes to choose a book cover which appeals instantly. So take a break with coffee and cake…..and have a browse.

In today’s online shopping age, readers often base their buying decisions from small postage stamp size book covers (Thumb-nails), a quick glance at the book description and the review. How much time do they really spend making that buying decision?

AUTHORS – You often only have seconds to get a reader to buy your book, is your book cover and book bio up to it?

My Friday Five Challenge is this….. IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES….

1) Go to any online book supplier,

2) Randomly choose a category,

3) Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,

4) Read the book Bio/ Description for this book, and any other details.

5) If there are reviews, check out a couple,

6) Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?

Science Fiction and Fantasy was this week’s choice and the cover image of The Vagrant by Peter Newman stood out.

The book description reads: 

The Vagrant is his name. He has no other.

Years have passed since humanity’s destruction emerged from the Breach.

Friendless and alone he walks across a desolate, war-torn landscape.

As each day passes the world tumbles further into depravity, bent and twisted by the new order, corrupted by the Usurper, the enemy, and his infernal horde.

His purpose is to reach the Shining City, last bastion of the human race, and deliver the only weapon that may make a difference in the ongoing war.

What little hope remains is dying. Abandoned by its leader, The Seven, and its heroes, The Seraph Knights, the last defences of a once great civilisation are crumbling into dust.

But the Shining City is far away and the world is a very dangerous place.

So far, so good.  There are 22 reviews, 16 of which are five star, the others four and three star and it has an overall rating of 4.5 stars. The reviews I looked at were positive and full of praise, even the lesser ones were fairly good.

Kindle price ~ £6.99 

No of pages ~ 400

Buy or Pass ~ I’ll PASS

I was tempted but it’s too high a price for a Kindle book and a debut novel. The paperback is only £2 more. If this came down in price I think I’d give it a go. There’s a huge number of books in this category and I’d read a quite a few that came up initially, a couple of which were only £1 and the highest was £3.66. I chose the audio in that one though. Out of 18 reviews on Amazon US 12 are one star and all are because of the price; a whopping $19.90 for a Kindle copy! Which at the moment converts to £12.85! Who sets these prices.

I had a quick check of some reviews on Amazon UK and there were several of the short, couple of lines five star variety and hadn’t reviewed books before, which made me wonder. The in-depth reviews I looked at were from reviewers who had a list of book reviews. So, in the end, it’s a pass because of the price, which is a shame. A lesser price would, I’m sure, result in more sales. 

That aside, I love The Vagrant’s cover. It says Post Apocalyptic, epic quest and lone hero winning out over any odds the destroyed world can throw at him. That appeals to me. It kind of reminds me of Jay Posey’s book, Three, which I love. The sample ‘look inside’ was promising and I could have carried on reading.

If you’d like to enter next week’s challenge check out Rosie’s blog to read about the Friday Five Challenge.